Innovation is our regular column in which we highlight emerging technologies and predict where they may lead

Call it advertisement hacking. Technology-inspired artists have designed ways for you to mask or perhaps even delete company logos in your field of view as you wander around a city or shopping centre.

The trend subverts a technology called augmented reality (AR)Movie Camera, by which virtual information – say restaurant ratings – is overlain on the real world as you peer through smart glasses or a smartphone camera.

New York artist Jeff Crouse has designed a program called Unlogo, which detects corporate logos in a video stream, then replaces them.

Movies and TV shows are riddled with product placements, subliminal ads that appear whenever a character brandishes an iPhone or sips a Dr. Pepper with a smile. But those pesky placements could soon be removed at the click of a button, thanks to a new Web service called Unlogo..

Simply put, Unlogo is a filter that detects logos and corporate signage in videos, and eliminates them. The service was started by Jeff Crouse

Delete City, developed by Jeff Crouse at Eyebeam, is a WordPress plug-in that will automatically conduct user-defined searches on sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, automatically updating your blog with content that has been deleted by the original host.